Wei Ni

Du Shu, who maintained a gentlemanly friendship with Xiahou Hui, would occasionally exchange letters with him, talking about people, events, or trivial matters.

For example, not long after he took office as the prefect of Hedong, he wrote a letter expressing his feelings that if Xiahou Hui was still in charge of the investigation of the scholars' families, he would have fewer constraints and his administration would be much more convenient.

Naturally, some subordinate officials were also mentioned.

For example, Wang Jun, a county official who resigned due to the transfer of the previous prefect.

In his letter, Du Shu claimed that this man was quite talented and upright, and was just the right assistant to restrain corrupt officials and lawless local tyrants. However, he sent someone to ask him to reinstate his post, but was rejected on the grounds that he wanted to travel to Luoyang.

It is no coincidence.

After Wang Jun returned to his hometown, the governor of Hongnong, Meng Kang, sent people to recruit him, but he declined.

Perhaps out of gratitude for Xiahou Hui's previous recommendation, Meng Kang wrote a letter praising Wang Jun's talents and claimed that Wang Jun had built a road more than ten steps wide in front of his house, implying that Xiahou Hui could try to appreciate and win him over for future use.

At that time, after reading the letter, Xiahou Hui's first thought was whether Sun Quan would suddenly sneeze at this moment?
After all, Yang Hu, Du Yu and Wang Jun were all about to step onto the stage of history.

cough!
Immediately afterwards, Xiahou Hui asked Ding Mi to pay attention to Wang Jun's whereabouts when he was out socializing.

Since Wang Jun came to Luoyang for a trip before leaving his post, both Meng Kang and Xiahou Hui could roughly guess what he was up to.

It was simply that, as a son of an aristocratic family, he had spent many years in the county. When he was about to be appointed to Luoyang with sufficient qualifications, the prefect's position was replaced. He did not want to waste his time any more, so he came to Luoyang to try his luck.

He was a scholar and had experience in the counties.

If one travels around Luoyang, makes friends with others, and shows off his talent and becomes famous, he will be appreciated by the powerful or recruited by the government.

This is also the routine practice for scholars to seek official positions.

Besides, Wang Jun has a way out.

His maternal uncle is Xu Miao, the current governor of Liangzhou and commander of the Protectorate of the Qiang, who also has a residence in the capital Luoyang.

If Wang Jun did not get the appreciation of the nobles and the recruitment of the government as he wished, he could shamelessly ask his wife's family to help him get a government position.

Therefore, when Ding Mi found out that Wang Jun often lingered in Imperial College and Chongwen Temple, Xiahou Hui came and waited for him.

Now, I am also a noble person to Wang Jun~
Given his ambition, he would not miss the opportunity.

Although this method is somewhat passive, we can't let him go directly to find Wang Jun, right?

Whether his status would be damaged or not is another matter. The key point is that doing so would lead to people criticizing him and gossiping about him. He was trying to make friends with Xu Miao who was far away in Liangzhou.

However, not every rabbit is willing to die under a tree.

I don’t know if it’s because he had a great reputation in his early years for not accepting requests and forcefully returning gifts, but Xiahou Hui waited under the tree until September in late autumn, but Wang Jun still didn’t show up.

Isn't this wishful thinking?
Xiahou Hui, who was getting impatient with waiting, had such doubts for a while.

But his perseverance still paid off.

Firstly, the scholars in Chongwen Temple no longer had any ill feelings towards him.

The reason was that he had always been very well-behaved and had not done anything to disrupt the literary atmosphere; he also had a lot of pine soot ink and paper books brought from Shiquan Pine Forest as gifts for the audience, and asked his uncle Wang Su to give them to his subordinates, scholars, and the Five Classics doctors who came to debate from time to time.

then
Then those scholars and doctors "suddenly" remembered that Xiahou Hui was also famous for his literature in Luoyang before he drowned, and he could not be called a vulgar warrior.

The other reason was that the purpose of making friends with Ma Jun was achieved very successfully.

Ma Jun had a stutter and was not good at speaking, so it was difficult for him to debate with others, and even fewer people were willing to listen to his words. Therefore, whenever he came to Chongwen Temple, he mostly just listened in to join in the fun.

But since Xiahou Hui came, he has had the opportunity to hone his eloquence.

Xiahou Hui condescended to ask questions such as how the ancient compass chariot worked, the advantages and disadvantages of Zhuge Liang's improved Sun Yi Crossbow, how the catapult that could fire stones continuously could delay the damage to the bearing, what terrain and landforms restricted the rollover of the improved trebuchet, and so on.

Most people would not refuse the opportunity to help others solve problems in their area of ​​expertise.

Ma Jun is no exception.

In particular, Xiahou Hui listened very attentively and drew inferences from time to time, which gave him a lot of inspiration.

After a few interactions, the two quickly became familiar with each other.

Moreover, Ma Jun had a vague feeling that they had met too late.

no way.

The field he was good at was not respected by scholars and literati, and he was neglected for many years because of his stuttering.

"Xiahou Zhiquan is a helpful friend!"

This is a phrase he has been saying a lot recently, and his kindness is evident.

But soon he began to feel regretful. As the second wave of battle reports from the Liaodong war reached the court, Xiahou Hui became busy with official duties and rarely came to Chongwen Temple.

However, it is said that since Zhuge Dan's persuasion that night with words like "Feng Tang is easy to grow old, and his merits in destroying countries and nations" finally prompted Xiahou Ba to make up his mind to take the risk.

He joined the army at a young age and wasted his years for a long time. He was unwilling to live his life in obscurity.

If you don't enter the tiger's lair, you won the tiger.

Not to mention that Zhuge Dan's analysis is also quite reasonable. Going there alone this time may not necessarily be risky.

Out of caution, when he sailed away, he also asked Zhuge Dan, Wei Shu and Sun Mi to continue to march to Xi'anping County. They raised many flags and set up many cooking stoves on the way, pretending that the Liaodong soldiers were coming to rescue by land, in order to confuse Han Ye. The army marched hundreds of miles deep into the enemy's territory, and they would either succeed or die.

The 1,500 soldiers who went with them all knew that there was no third outcome. Even those who wanted to desert had nowhere to escape because they were floating on the sea, so everyone was full of fighting spirit.

Fortunately, their bet was right.

Just as Zhuge Dan had expected, Han Ye left very few troops in Daifang County, only more than 3,000 people.

This number of people is not enough to capture Daifang City, but it is more than enough to besiege the city and cut off any information from inside or outside.

Except for sending a messenger by boat to Xiangping, Liaodong to ask for help before Han Wei's troops arrived at the city, the governor of Rudaifang, Gong Zun, spent the rest of the time leaning against the city wall and sighing.

Daifang County, which was separated from Lelang, was located in the easternmost part of Youzhou. It had the smallest population and production, and was completely unable to support more than a thousand soldiers.

His army only has 800 soldiers.

Even if we include the officials from various offices, hunters from counties, or guards of merchants trapped in the city, the total number is no more than a few thousand.

Therefore, he had no intention of leading his troops out of the city to fight.

Although his 800 men were all Youzhou border troops with strong combat capability, enough to match the 3,000 miscellaneous soldiers assembled by the various chiefs of Han Ye, what if something went wrong?
If he is defeated, the city cannot be defended.

From a public perspective, it would mean that Daifang County would fall into the hands of barbarians; from a private perspective, he would die with the shame of incompetence.

Of course, if the food in the city ran out and reinforcements from Liaodong or the imperial court had not arrived, he would have no choice but to lead his soldiers to make a desperate attempt.

On the twenty-first day of the eighth month in mid-autumn, the city had been trapped for a full month and the food in the city was running out.

Gong Zun, who had begun allocating food quotas ten days ago, now asked his subordinates to urge the wealthy families in the city to provide pigs, chickens, dried fish and other food for the soldiers.

But he was still eagerly awaiting reinforcements.

The food will run out in five days at most. Can the troops from Qingzhou or General Xiahou arrive in time?
The two places are so far apart, it shouldn't be possible, right?

As usual, Gong Zun was leaning against the battlement of the city wall and looking at Han Ye's troops not far away, and he had a vague answer in his mind.

The soldiers under his command also had the answer.

Therefore, many people began to advise him to fight to the death while his soldiers still had the strength to fight.

It's a fight for life, not a breakout.

With no place to break out, these soldiers who had been guarding the border for years and had no way to survive wanted to make Han Ye pay a heavy price as well - they hoped that Gong Zun could lead them to break out through the east gate and get the opportunity to rush into Han Ye's territory and burn and kill to vent their hatred.

Gong Zun was quite moved by this.

Or maybe, that's what he thought in his heart.

But Xiahou Ba did not give him the opportunity to put it into practice.

When the boats carrying the 1,500 reinforcements entered the waterway, Han Ye's scouts discovered them as expected, but were unable to stop them.

According to the inertial thinking that the Liaodong army should first attack Xi'anping and the Wei State Qingzhou reinforcements should first rescue Lelang, they were not prepared to deploy defenses on the river. But they urged the soldiers to be on high alert, and they still had plenty of time.

However, they were doomed to be powerless.

When Xiahou Ba led his soldiers to attack with a desperate spirit, the Daifang defenders, whose morale was high due to the arrival of reinforcements, took the opportunity to attack. Under the pincer attack from both sides, the Han Ye army with simple weapons was defeated before long.

There was no time to burn even the baggage and food in the military camp, as they were all seized by the Wei army.

Gong Zun, who felt relieved after leading the garrison to chase for more than 20 miles, returned to see Xiahou Ba. He did not express gratitude for the timely rescue, but asked for permission to lead his troops as the vanguard and charge into the territory of Mahan in the south.

The reason was that the Han-Yi coalition forces that invaded this time were mainly composed of the Yi, Mo, Bunaihou to the east of Lelang and the Mahan in the south of Daifang.

As long as he led his troops into the territory of Mahan, the Mahan troops who had learned the news would surely rush back; and the Wimeng were unwilling to support the army alone, and seeing that the reinforcements from Wei had arrived, they would surely withdraw their troops. In this way, the siege of Lelang would be lifted.

It can be considered as besieging Wei to save Zhao.

Xiahou Ba didn't listen at first.

There is a time lag in the transmission of military intelligence, and he was worried that before Ma Han learned the news and withdrew his troops, the capital of Lelang County, Korea, would have already been captured.

Therefore, he thought it would be safest to let the soldiers rest for a day or two, until they had recovered from the discomfort of floating on the sea, and then head north to rescue Lelang.

If Gong Zun insists on killing the enemy, he can lead 300 men from his own army as the vanguard, and he can let a small colonel temporarily guard the city of Fang.

Two days later, he changed his mind.

Zheng Gui led his troops and arrived ahead of time.

Zheng Gui, who was in charge of transporting grain and fodder for the Liaodong War, transported grain and fodder to the newly established Lelang and Daifang garrisons more than once after the war, and was very familiar with the geography of the area.

He also made the same guess as Zhuge Dan.

On the grounds that Lelang City was strong and Daifang was difficult to defend, the navy was sent directly to rescue Daifang County.

With sufficient troops, Xiahou Ba would naturally not ignore Gong Zun's request for battle, so he divided his troops into two groups.

He first increased Gongzun's troops and sent them south, waiting for Ma Han to learn the news and rush back, then he ambushed them on the road, killed more than a thousand people on the battlefield, and captured more than two thousand. When the various states of Wi and Mo heard about it, they were terrified and withdrew their troops.

The siege of Lelang was lifted and Xi'an was restored to peace. (End of this chapter)